Posted on 10/16/2007 10:17:59 AM PDT by NYer
LONDON – A debate over a movie’s anti-religious antagonism – or lack thereof – is heating up ahead of its upcoming release, with some accusing Hollywood of “castrating” the anti-Catholic themes present in the novel from which it is based.
The expected blockbuster, “The Golden Compass,” is named after the American title of best-selling author Philip Pullman’s novel “Northern Lights” and will star actress Nicole Kidman and James Bond star Daniel Craig.
The original children’s novel, part of Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” series, rejects organized religion – in particular, the Catholic Church – and critics of the movie version say the anti-religious elements of the book have been taken out of the storyline so as not to offend faithful moviegoers in the United Kingdom and United States.
“It was clear right from the start that the makers of this film intended to take out the anti-religious elements of Pullman's book. In doing that they are taking the heart out of it, losing the point of it, castrating it,” said Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, a British organization that promotes secularism and which Pullman is an honorary associate of.
“It seems that religion has now completely conquered America's cultural life and it is much the poorer for it," she said in The Guardian newspaper Sunday. "What a shame that we have to endure such censorship here too.”
Filmmakers, however, say they have stayed true to a majority of the narrative in the fantasy novel – which tells the story of a young heroine and her battle against a dominant religious authority called the Magisterium, which condones the abduction of children for experimentation.
Movie director Chris Weitz, who directed the British hit family comedy “About A Boy,” starring actor Hugh Grant, assured that the film would be a fair reflection of Pullman's novel.
“In the books, the Magisterium is a version of the Catholic Church gone wildly astray from its roots. If that's what you want in the film, you'll be disappointed,” he said.
The filmmaker explained that the sinister organization has been changed so that the film will now appear to be a more general widespread attack on dogmatic authorities.
“We have expanded the range of meanings of what the Magisterium represents. Philip Pullman is against any kind of organized dogma whether it is church hierarchy or, say, a Soviet hierarchy,” he noted.
Nicole Kidman, who is reportedly Christian herself, has also defended the movie.
She acknowledged that the movie “has been watered down a little,” but that it still introduces a world that is "dominated by the Magisterium, which seeks to control all humanity, and whose greatest threat, is the curiosity of a child."
“I was raised Catholic. The Catholic Church is part of my essence. I wouldn't be able to do this film if I thought it were at all anti-Catholic,” she has also stated.
Pullman, meanwhile, has said that he believes the “outline of the story is faithful to what I wrote, given my knowledge of what they have done.”
Although he is a self-professed atheist and a supporter of the British Humanist Association, Pullman has found support from some Christians – most notably Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams. They point out that the English writer’s negative portrayal of the "Church" in “His Dark Materials” amounts to an attack on dogmatism and the use of religion to oppress, not on Christianity itself. Williams has gone so far as to propose that “His Dark Materials” be taught as part of religious education in schools.
Others, however, view the “His Dark Materials” series as a direct rebuttal of C. S. Lewis' series “The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” as both feature children facing adult moral choices, talking animals, religious allegories, parallel worlds, and concern the ultimate fate of those worlds. Furthermore, the first published book from “Narnia” begins with a young girl hiding in a wardrobe, as does the first “His Dark Materials” book.
The U.S. release date for "The Golden Compass," based off the first installment of Pullman's "His Dark Material" triology, is Dec. 7, 2007.
The more the Catholic Church is persecuted; the more it will grow.
They don’t know this, though, do they?
Hehehehe!
Wow. Is that why I didn’t like the books?
I guess I never got the theme. I just knew that the stories sucked wind.
I think you may have misread the WoT series. You learn that before the breaking that the Aes Sedai were united male and female. The world was at peace and progressing. There was the note of how they had to relearn war as they had not had any soldiers for a long time. The Dark One(Satan) is able to break a little free to taint the male Aes Sedai and other humans causing strife, war and the eventual breaking of the world. The character of Rand was to purify the male Aes Sedai and bring unity back to that organization. I think the series points out that it is not the organization, but those who commit evil in the name of the Creator and the Aes Sedai. It is the same with the Catholic Church. You have to differentiate that it is the “man” that does the evil in the name of God and his Church, not the Church itself. The author was a practicing Anglican.
“One of the most unfortunate things about the whole anti-Harry-Potter episode was that it gave a strong impression that conservative Christian critics are too paranoid, and too stupid to properly evaluate fantasy literature.
I was predicting years ago that as a result, when something really toxic was offered to the public, we’d be powerless to effectively combat it because of the boy-who-cried-wolf reaction.”
I think the biggest problem is that it is a children’s book. But parents should always have read what their children are about to read. So the content can be filtered. As far as adults go, one just has to use their best judgment. Reading Jack Whyte’s Pelagius worshipping in his Camulod Series led me to the Catholic Church rather then turn me away. So it just depends. Of course it also helped that Whyte kept his screeds to specific chapters, so one could just skip over them upon the second and third readings.
So the Catholic Church doesn't want kids to read? What's wrong with reading?! < /s>
I've said this about Pulman's anti-Christian books before. But Christian parents will be lining up for this movie "because now Johnny's reading!"
Your child's salvation is more important than improving his SAT scores.
From the Amazon.com review:
For one thing, people there each have a personal dæmon, the manifestation of their soul in animal form. For another, hers is a universe in which science, theology, and magic are closely allied:Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of Christianity knows that comunicating with demons is, how you say, "frowned upon"? Pulman is either an occultist, or he is being used by the demonic.As for what experimental theology was, Lyra had no more idea than the urchins. She had formed the notion that it was concerned with magic, with the movements of the stars and planets, with tiny particles of matter, but that was guesswork, really. Probably the stars had dæmons just as humans did, and experimental theology involved talking to them.
In either case, stay the hell away.
I was predicting years ago that as a result, when something really toxic was offered to the public, we'd be powerless to effectively combat it because of the boy-who-cried-wolf reaction.
You may be right. But my position (and that of Michael O'Brien) is that HP is harmful in and of itself, since it interests children in the occult. I also said that HP is just the tip of the iceberg in the Young Adult/Fantasy genre. I quoted from Pulman in those threads.
I understand your point, but my point was, and is, that HP prepares the young soul for further corruptive reading, like Pulman's. It's a judgement call, but it should be clear to everyone now where this train is heading.
Pullman’s use of daemon is not the classic Christian meaning of demon. He’s trying to be cute here. He detaches a person’s soul from the person and makes it into another being, an animal, although they really are attached because if one dies, so does the other. Then he calls this animal form of soul a “daemon.” He’s definitely making a statement. I have no respect for Pullman at all. He’s a skillful writer, though.
Flawed, no. I’m happy with who I am and the actions I take. I don’t live up to what I know I can become sometimes but that hardly means I feel that I’m intrinsically flawed in some manner.
And maybe that’s the crucial point: Christians believe they are carrying around the ecclesiastical baggage of something that supposedly happened thousands of years ago. I don’t believe in that so I’m not carrying around any baggage. I live for this world only and on my own merits. I don’t need to be ‘born again’ to feel clean; my moral worth is based solely on my own actions.
And what was this ‘original sin’ in the first place. It wasn’t just defying God’s orders; it was doing it to obtain knowledge. Why worship a God who would punish all of humanity for that?
This sincerely surprises me. I would have thought anybody could see that every human being has flaws --- intellectual blind-spots, a capacity for cunning self-deception, drives and appetites which dominate our thoughts to an unreasonable extent, ten thousand individuals' flaws which melt together in the crucible of politics and aggregate into Pharaohism or Czarism or Stalinism or (gosh, those are too obvious) even the ceaseless bickering of faculty rivalries or the underhand cruelties of ugly marriages.
This goes beyond apish instincts or animal behavior. Animals don't do this. Not one of them would make a flambe of Nanking or Nagasaki or claw into their own wombs to rip out their young. There is something wrong with human beings in particular. Isn't it obvious?
I don't think what happened in terms of an inherited flawed nature (which is what Original Sin means) was punishment as much as it was consequence. Punishment would have been allowing these two spoiled people, A-Dumb and Naive, to have exactly what they wanted: Knowledge without Wisdom, Loyalty, or Trust. (I mean, think of it: they already knew Good. Their only "gain" was they got to know Evil. And in doing so, betrayed and wronged their greatest Friend, the One who had already given them all Good. How smart is that?)
It was sheer mercy that they lost their preternatural gifts. With knowledge but without wisdom, loyalty or trust, they would have made existence sheer hell for each other --- and no escape!
But God has a plan. Turn the page...
...And here we are: we're in the midst of it. The Predicament. A grand fight. A grand drama. Lord of the Rings times six billion.
Wonderful as a myth, hey? And even better because it's true.
Probably. But he could be trying to make children comfortable with the practice of communicating with 'spirit guides' or 'ascended masters.' And we know what those are. Regardless, the word daemon is obviously similar to demon, and it is simply reprehensible to inure children to the idea of communicating with a 'spirit guide' or demon. Even if he doesn't know what he's doing, someone in hell does.
“So what are we to do? Cry out, and who will believe us?”
In all things pray.
Secondly, I would talk about it, discuss it and e-mail it to friends and neighbors who are inclined to do likewise. I think that many parents and teachers do understand the nuances of this kind of propaganda and, in fact, we even have a quote which acknowledges that the books are the work of a religious bigot. They simply can’t hide their hatred.
I actually felt that the conservative critiques of Harry Potter were merely a fringe element - and they are. Many fifth, sixth and seventh graders are very capable of discussing the issues of allegory, metaphor and symbolism implemented in fiction. My former students loved these literary devices. We were actually able to use elements of the Potter and Narnia series to demonstrate how it reflected Christian themes.
The nature of secular humanism is that it tries to muddy up the waters of open discussion. It doesn’t show well in the full light of day. It uses triangulation, moral rationalization and rhetorical devices that are meant to trick and confuse both adults and children. Children need to be instructed to step around these mines the same way that adults do. You can do it without bringing them nose to nose with evil.
This can become a teaching opportunity if you feel that your children are ready. That doesn’t mean they see the film, but maybe they learn why they shouldn’t. Make them tell you!
On the rare occasion that I get into it with a secular humanist the only way to have the discussion is to lay the ground bare; do they believe that evil exists? Do they believe in Hell? These are deliberate and uncomplicated questions. More than a “yes” or “no” is not an acceptable response. There are no smoke and mirrors available. Children can be taught that hemming and hawing and answering questions with questions are to be seen for what they are intended to be; obfuscation and lies.
They can tell you from whom such things come.
I agree wholeheartedly. I also agree with your remarks earlier on Harry Potter.
“We’re all somewhat flawed. Chipped. Cracked. I know I am. Aren’t you?”
All of the above, but still a work in progress. ;0)
No I just see people as they are, for you the standard of perfection is the idea of what Jesus was. There is no standard, in that sense, for me…that’s not to say there are no goals we should achieve or a morality to follow, just that the ideal person does not exist because we’re all different and we all have different goals.
(I actually have a very concrete morality, more rigid then Christianity even but that’s a different conversation.)
Now say that you’re right and Adam and Eve were fools. What does that have to do for us? Why should we be punished for their sins? Under what moral system can you justify someone as being sinful just as they’re born?
Finally why do you believe in all that? Cause you ‘feel’ it? Because you’ve reasoned it out? I’ve always assumed it’s because most people believe in what their parents believed.
I say we're not being punished for their sins, we're inheriting what was heritable in terms of damage.
We neither earn nor merit what we inherit from our ancestors, neither good nor bad. If your parents both had IQs of 150+, no allergies, optimum immune systems, cheerful dispositions and symmetrical facial features, you'd likely enjoy these benfits yourself without having merited them; likewise if they had low intellectual abilities, blood disorders, a tendency to depression, and facial deformities, you, though innocent, would likely suffer similarly.
The consequences of the ancestral breakdown were just like that. They are genetic, or closely analogous to genetic. That's what we mean when we say they are part of our nature.
"Under what moral system can you justify someone as being sinful just as they’re born?"
I don't.
"Finally why do you believe in all that?"
I don't.
The transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state.
It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called "sin" only in an analogical sense: it is a sin "contracted" and not "committed" - a state and not an act.
Notice that anything that is transmitted by propagation would have to be, by definition, genetic or quasi-genetic. The Catechism rightly calls it "mysterious," but one thing is clear: it is part of our nature as human beings.
That’s the idea I was trying to get at, sometimes I’m just horrible at actually finding words to say what I want to when I’m talking about something that’s not concrete like ideas or philosophy - on the other hand I’m excellent at expressingmyself if I’m talking about physics or fixing my VCR or something.
Anyways, I’m sad that Robert Jordan died, I hope he left enough notes and such for someone to properly finish up the series.
Whenever I hear the word ‘daemon’, I always think of the little Unix programs running in the background of things, like ‘services’ in windows. I’m imagining how I would have interpreted a kid having a personal ‘daemon’ if I had read the books... lol I think sometimes I’m almost too nerdy to function =)
Oh, for crying out loud, Bill Donohue is a textbook example of the sort of people who have no life other than to scour the earth high and low searching out things at which to take offense. Leave that sort of thing to the DUmbass left.
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